One of the most splendid manuscripts commissioned by Philip the Good of Burgundy is a large-format history of the conquest of Jerusalem in the First Crusade, dominated by its illustrations. In the mid-1450s, when the manuscript was commissioned, Philip was organizing support for a crusade in response to the Fall of Constantinople, leading by example with his own crusader’s vow. The Jerusalem Chronicle’s miniatures, decoration, and even layout encourage readers to see the hero, Godfrey of Bouillon, as an ancestor/forerunner of the duke and as part of a Burgundian crusade tradition—something that isn’t actually present in the text. This talk will explore how much the design and illustration of a manuscript can do to take the text it is illustrating in another direction entirely.

Elizabeth Moodey was a scribe for about a dozen years before she started her doctoral program. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University and enjoyed three productive years of research based in the Royal Library, thanks to a fellowship from the Belgian American Educational Foundation. Her first book, Illuminated Crusader Histories for Philip the Good of Burgundy, was published last year by Brepols. She is currently Assistant Professor of the History of Art at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she teaches medieval art, manuscript culture, and the art of the court of Burgundy.